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The Flat Ecosystem, brand zealots and Primal Branding

You can buy a $3 million Super Bowl spot to promote your brand, but you can achieve the same results, or better, by spelling out your origin story and looking after the consumers who are zealots of your brand. That’s the basis of Primal Branding, says Patrick Hanlon.

The veteran marketer, and author of Primal Branding and The Social Code, has been unraveling what makes consumers into advocates since before social media made it a 24/7 job. As CEO of the strategic consultants Thinktopia, he’s worked with brands from Levi’s to the UN and Kraft to PayPal.

From the sidelines of his first Primal.Live workshop in New York, Hanlon discussed Primal Branding with Velocitize’s editor, Mercedes Cardona.

In today’s fragmented media ecosystem, building a brand story and community is a key part of remaining competitive, whether your brand is a startup or a legacy, and the medium is Twitter or the Super Bowl, says Hanlon.

“It’s really about taking something that starts out as meaningless and making it meaningful,” said Hanlon. “It all boils down to preference. When I can make you feel better about me than someone else in terms of my story, that’s called preference and that’s what creates a sale, no matter if you’re Johnson & Johnson or you’re an entrepreneur.”

Even as marketing becomes more data-driven and devices such as digital assistants and home systems from Amazon or Google become intermediaries, brands still have a role to play in that environment, said Hanlon.